but still bearing visible
Clare Hu, Nick D'Ornellas

Working from the lineage of unknown women weavers, under-the-table service workers, broken threads, miscommunication, physical glitches, text becoming texture, textile becoming texture, a quick glimpse of a blue tarp deteriorated with time, the last look of a room becoming the vessel for remembering; but still bearing visible. Located in a small triangular storefront in Times Square, the site becomes a meeting ground for Clare Hu & Nicholas D’Ornellas, whose practices are rooted in contemporary craft and formalist language.

Hu crafts a visual tapestry that reflects the inner layers of familial history, monolithic ideologies of the American South, and the shifting boundaries between spaces, both real and imagined. D’Ornellas’ screenprints wrap around the site using a minimalist and repetitive approach.

but still bearing visible sheds light on the interplay between both physical and personal distances, while also rendering the shifting nature of immigrant populations in both Jersey City and Atlanta. Hu and D’Ornellas seek to bridge the gap between disparate experiences and foster an understanding of the various forces that shape collective identity.

About the Artists

Nicholas D’Ornellas (b. 1997) is a Guyanese-born printmaker and weaver based in Jersey City, NJ. He holds a BFA (2021) from The Cooper Union. His focus includes printmaking as a vehicle to explore domestic life within immigrant narratives through life-sized, handwoven, screen-printed textiles. Nick’s work pays homage to his ongoing interest in the functionality of craft and also his family’s flight from racial and classist violence in Guyana. He physically threads together the layered emotions that come with being within a deeply consuming family structure.

For more information on Nicholas’s work, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

Clare Hu is an artist and weaver currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She completed her BFA with a focus in Textiles at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Hu has had solo presentations at Dream Clinic Project Space in Columbus, OH and at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. She has shown in group shows at the Artists Space in New York City, NY, the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, and the Cohen Gallery in Alfred, NY. She is a past artist in residence at the Hambidge Center, the Textile Arts Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA, and the Gibbes Museum.

For more information on Clare’s work, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.